Yahoo Buying Time, Board May Be Looking To Deal

With billionaire investor Carl Icahn's consortium of investors looking to take over Yahoo's board at its upcoming shareholder meeting, Yahoo has bought itself more time by pushing back the meeting from July 3 to "around the end of July."

Yahoo announced the new date yesterday in an SEC filing, saying that, in light of the Icahn proxy fight, it needs more time to file and distribute new "preliminary proxy materials."

There appears to be no doubt that Yahoo is feeling the pressure from Icahn's campaign: According to Boom Town blogger Kara Swisher, Yahoo's Chairman Roy Bostock -- while publicly defending the company against Icahn's plan -- is privately reassuring several major investors that Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang not be left without "supervision" in any future negotiations.

According to Swisher's sources, Yang and fellow Yahoo Cofounder David Filo were caught off-guard when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer walked away from the first negotiation round.

"While Yahoo's Yang and Filo left the meeting thinking it went well and more price-kibitzing would go on," she reported, "Ballmer used it as an excuse to end the circus."

A source told her that Yang is realizing he may have made a mistake in his handling of the talks: "Jerry is beloved at the company and he knows now that that's at risk if he lets this spin out of control any more, so I think he's wised up to the situation."

In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that both Yahoo and Microsoft are circling back around to the idea of a full acquisition, but "Microsoft isn't convinced [Yang and Filo] are willing to accept anything less than $37 a share," writes reporter Matthew Kartinsching, citing anonymous sources.

Becky Nagel is the vice president of Web & Digital Strategy for 1105's Converge360 Group, where she oversees the front-end Web team and deals with all aspects of digital strategy. She also serves as executive editor of the group's media Web sites, and you'll even find her byline on PureAI.com, the group's newest site for enterprise developers working with AI. She recently gave a talk at a leading technical publishers conference about how changes in Web technology may impact publishers' bottom lines. Follow her on twitter @beckynagel.